Whaaat my boobs didn’t just grow, that’s crazy.
Developer: Matrix Corporation
Publisher: D3 Publisher Inc.
Genre: Mystery Dungeon
Type: Single Player
Release date: August 1, 2019
Ever since Belles Fleurs Academy opened, it always had a mysterious legend attached to its name. Legend has it that the large garden (aka the Grand Garden) the academy prides itself on is not just any garden. No matter how much time has passed or what season it is, no flower has ever wilted. It’s even rumored among Belles Fleurs’ students that it’s due to the Holy Blossom Flora that keeps all flowers thriving. However, not many can actually see if the legend is true as Belles Fleurs Academy only accepts high-class girls to attend. Well, that would be true if this was last year. For the first time ever, Belle Fleurs Academy is welcoming their first, and hopefully not last, transfer student: Hinata Akatsuki.
Just as Hinata is hyping herself up for her first day, she’s suddenly finds herself in a mysterious dungeon with monsters lurking around each floor and items laying around for her to pick up. Thankfully, an even more mysterious voice was kind enough to guide her through the motions and Hinata made it out safely. Just in time to make it to class and introduce herself to her fellow classmates as well! However, the next morning everyone got a cruel wake-up call. The Grand Garden has mysteriously withered and it doesn’t take long for some to connect this and Hinata’s arrival.
To clear Hinata’s name and restore the Grand Garden, you’re going to have to go back into the dungeons. When you start, you’ll only have Hinata and Berune, but as you progress the other girls will be open to venturing in as well. Either way, you get to choose who you want to control and bring in one partner to help you out. If you ever played a mystery dungeon game like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon (like me), you’ll already be semi-familiar with Omega Labyrinth Life. Each dungeon (apart from the first couple) are randomly generated, full with a variety of monsters ready to attack you, items, and traps.
Each monster that you defeat is converted into Omega Power and gives you some experience. Omega Power acts as currency and is automatically absorbed in the leader’s breasts. After a certain amount, you’ll get a short cutscene of the leader’s breasts growing a little bigger. This acts as a secondary leveling system. Like leveling up normally, a bust size increase will restore health and increase stats, but with the added bonus of recharging your skills. Considering that the monsters get stronger as you climb higher, don’t take the stairs if you find them early. Even if you have good equipment, being too low of a level will get you killed.
Of course, Omega Labyrinth Life has some other features that will help you along the way. Every so often, you’ll come across special rooms (or in some cases a special monster). Rinka, Belles Fleurs’ director, will set up shop inside dungeons so you can unload on unwanted items and maybe buy something that you desperately need (like food). However, don’t try to steal from her. She will strike you down without batting an eye. There are also two monsters that will sell items: the Greedrat who has rare items but cost twice as much and Petal Gob who will sell garden items. Some rooms, or even a whole floor, will be a garden where you can collect seeds. You can also come across a Hot Spring that will restore your health and remove negative status effects. If you’re lucky, you’ll find one with a Holy Blossom, making it a Flower Spring so you can get double the attack power, increased Omega Power absorption, and get monsters to drop seeds for the rest of the floor. Entering a Hot/Flower Spring will give you an illustration of the leader (or Holy Blossom) in the hot spring where you can touch her. Lastly, you’ll also have monster rooms/floors which will have a ton of monsters and a ton of traps. If you have any skills that affect the whole room, now is the time to use them.
Other than that, equipment can give you bonuses as well. Some sword and shield combinations will give you a bonus stat increase and if you have matching bra and panties, will give you a bonus depending on what set you have. It can range from bonus stats to dealing damage when a monster attacks. You’ll also have some missions for each dungeon, like use this item or have this bra in your inventory, and will grant bonus Omega Power if you complete all of them.
If you get knocked out in a dungeon, say goodbye to your inventory and all your equipment. Thankfully, there are systems in place that will let you keep at least your equipment. At the academy’s store, you can put a GPS Strap on your equipment so if you do get knocked out they’ll find their way back to the academy. You will have to buy them back, but it’s better than nothing. Just be sure to put the GPS strap back on before you leave again. There’s also this rare potion, Fairy Wings, that will protect your items as well. Lastly, your last resort is a TFT petal. I believe TFT petals can be gained when walking into a flower room and are activated either when you get knocked out or when you finish the dungeon. When activated, it will start a Tit For Tat minigame with the Holy Blossom that resides in the area. Here, you’ll basically play Rock-Paper-Scissors with your boobs. Normally, this will determine your bonus Omega Power and seeds, but if you get knocked out, it will determine whether you can take your items back home. As long as you win or tie, you get to keep your items. A little tip, there is a small window after your opponent’s choice is shown where you can change your choice.
If you’re thinking “well maybe I can just close the game and go back in to save my items”, it sadly doesn’t work. While you do manually save, it seems like Omega Labyrinth Life can tell when you exit the game inside a dungeon and will act as if you got knocked out. This doesn’t cause any trouble, just remember to suspend save data if you do have to stop playing inside a dungeon, but if a knight enemy unequips your best equipment and sends it flying into another monster (thus destroying it) it can be annoying.
When you’re not venturing into dungeons, you’ll be at Belles Fleurs Academy doing a variety of things. You’ll mostly be tending to the academy’s garden where you’ll plant seeds, water them, and harvest the flowers for Nectar, more seeds, bouquets, fruit, and flower pearls. These flowers grow over time, each type having blooming at different times, and takes into account real time when just hanging out and will advance a set amount when in a dungeon or in the greenhouse. You can advance time with the Flower Dial if you spend Nectar, but it might not be the best way to use it.
Nectar is just as important as having Omega Power as you use it to level up a skill. Going to the Greenhouse will allow you to perform Skill Blooms on a character, which will open up an event where tap on her various sweet spots till a Full Bloom activates. Full Blooms will give you another, more exposed, illustration and tapping on her body will grant experience while tapping on her boobs or other sensitive spots will grant even more. Once time runs out, you’ll have to stop time (or start Flower Moment) for a few seconds before the screen is splashed with Omega Power (of course, more will be granted if you touch them during Flower Moment). In addition of the selected skill getting experience, you’ll also get a vial of that girl’s droplets that can be used in the garden. You can unlock more skills by buying them in the academy’s shop. Nectar can also buy more seeds, fruit, or bouquets from the flourist, though her items change each day.
There is also a building where you can synthesize or assimilate your equipment. This is not something you should ignore, trust me. While it may seem pointless to carry around multiple copies of the same equipment, it’s actually useful to keep them. Synthesizing will combine two of the same items to raise its luster value and thus the stat. Each item will have a max luster value so you can’t exactly raise it forever (nor can you synthesize items with different max values). You can also make new equipment if you find the right combination of items. You can synthesize while in dungeons so you don’t have to wait to boost your equipment or to clear inventory space. Some books will even raise luster values if you read them. Assimilating equipment will let you add extra effects to them, but there’s only so many you can attach to one. Each different effect is only able to be attached to either swords, shields, or armor and will cost garden components. You can block certain statuses, increase damage to or reduce damage from certain enemies, add a chance to apply negative status effects, or give yourself a permanent stat boost. Equipment will come in with default effects attached, but you might want to change it per your needs. Like attach block unequip (those damn knight enemies) or block bust downs or rust (which lowers luster value).
Some items you’ll pick up will be in red, indicating they’re unappraised. To identity these items, you’ll use Omega Power to Size Up. This will put the item into a crystal (or other Size items once bought) and put it between the lead girl’s (or whoever you choose if at Belles Fleurs) boobs where you will have to grind it till it takes shape. This can be done inside dungeons as well, but there’s a dedicated building so you can get a full list of unappraised items in your possession.
Then you have the cosmetic side of things. Assuming that you have enough Omega Points, you’ll be able to customize how Belle Fleurs is decorated. You get to decide what the benches, bushes, lights, trees, and decorations look like. You’ll even get to decide the tile color and the flower bed pattern. There are also themes connected to the decorations, like spooky or lovely, that helps out with matching everything, but sadly no themed picnic tables. If you have enough Omega Points, you can even splurge on an option that will decorate the whole area for you. My only complaint is that you can’t pre-decorate a wilted garden area. I get why, since there’s no flowers for to to tend to, but it just makes you have to go back to the garden customization building so everything can finally be matching.
Lastly, there’s some miscellaneous areas. You can visit Flora in the middle of the Grand Garden to pick off bugs for Nectar every so often and visit the Omega Lake to get free Omega Power and later on will be where Pai fishes at. Then you have the store area. This is where the Flourist is, but you can also talk to the Cooking Club to get a free meal everyday to take into a dungeon. The academy store is headed by Rinka and she can be a quick way to get equipment for synthesizing or buying more food. Rinka is also the one that will put a GPS Strap on your equipment and where you buy extra items. She sells you skills, challenge dungeons, upgrades (like opening up a spa or increasing locker capacity), Size items, gallery photos and DLC items if you bought the DLC.
If you’re done with getting ready and gardening, but don’t want to continue the story just yet, there’s a couple things you can do. You can try and complete each character’s challenge dungeon, go into Sage Trials to test your brain, climb the Clock Tower (which has 99 floors), or send in Nem and/or Pai in once you unlock Fairy Mode so you can get a lot of Omega Power since they convert equipment into Omega Power right away. Just be careful as the fairies can’t go into any tough dungeons.
After you finish the story, there is a lot of post-game content you can do. Even if you already did all the available Challenge Dungeons, Sage Trails, and got gold medals on all dungeons, there’s still more you can do. Two Challenge dungeons are available to purchase: Rinka’s Test Site, which is basically boss rush, and A Distant Garden. In addition, you’ll unlock the ability to Size Up with other characters and new flowers are available for you to plant.
For those who don’t own a Switch, Omega Labyrinth Life is also available on the Playstation 4 under the title Labyrinth Life, but there is a downside. Labyrinth Life is censored. There’s no touch events, the more explicit illustrations are removed, Hot Springs events have more steam to cover up the characters, and the Rock-Papers-Scissors minigame just shows the character portraits beside their choice rather than controlling their breasts. Well, at least Labyrinth Life is $10 cheaper.
Verdict
Omega Labyrinth Life was certainly not a game I was expecting to play, but it pleasantly surprised me. It’s an enjoyable mystery dungeon game with some gardening on the side and some fan service sprinkled in, which by the end I didn’t mind much. Heck, if you want you can just skip all the fan service events except when you have a TFT Petal which is understandable. While the story is a tad lacking and you might not find the girls all that memorable, I did like how silly the story was and how each of the playable girls have their unique skills. If you plan to pick this title up, there’s little that’ll disappoint you.
